Aplicación: Monitor de intercambio de datos (MID)

As the primary means by which most productive assets and inputs required for agricultural production may be accessed and solutions to most problems experi- enced by farmers resolved, financial income is an important capital asset in urban agriculture. Yet many urban farming households in Langas generally had limited access to financial resources not only for investment in urban agriculture, but also for overall household well-being. The various extension services providers identified access to financial support and credit as one of the major issues over which urban farmers sought advice and assistance. Financial constraints partly explain why only few households engaged in high value agricultural enterprises (e.g. dairy farming) that required relatively high levels of initial financial invest- ment. It has already been noted that a lack of financial resources also constrained farmers from accessing more land to expand their scale of production, diversify production and optimize productivity of available spaces by investing in appro- priate modern intensification techniques and farming practices. Since female- headed households were overrepresented among the poorest category of house- holds (see Chapter 3), it can be construed that they would have had compara-

tively more difficulties accessing financial capital necessary for agricultural in- vestment.

Only four respondents – three women and one man – reported having received external financial support for urban agriculture in form of credit. This relates, in part, to the general absence of micro-credit facilities specifically tailored for ur- ban farmers; existing micro-credit institutions focused more on non-farming business enterprises. Moreover, the farmers were also not organized into farmers’ groups, a prerequisite for accessing assistance from farmers’ support programmes like the Eldoret Catholic Diocese’s Agriculture and Food Security Programme (see below). In any case, even the micro-credit institutions generally provided credit through organized groups. In the latter case, women were the main benefi- ciaries since they were more involved with groups based on social networks of solidarity and mutual aid. Such groups provided an important infrastructure for women to access credit from not only formal microfinance institutions but also from internally generated savings (see Chapter 8). Thus the fact that only three women reported accessing credit for investment in urban agriculture reflects the fact that credit accessed through social networks was rarely (re)invested in urban agriculture, even though urban agriculture formed an important basis for wo- men’s participation in social networks (see Chapter 8). This further underlines urban farmers’ limited regard for urban agriculture as an important business that required financial investment to boost productivity and profitability. Among the few people who (re-)invested their credit in urban agriculture was Auma. After receiving a lumpsum payout from a ROSCA in April 2009, Auma and her hus- band decided to purchase a chaff cutter machine, which they deemed necessary for mitigating scarcity of animal feeds during the dry spell.

Among important household sources of financial resources for agricultural in- vestment included personal savings and income from non-farming livelihood ac- tivities. It was apparent in Chapter 6 that the costs of initial investments in urban agriculture – including purchase of land and inputs – were mostly borne by men. While for many men such investments were considered more as a means of fa- cilitating their wives’ involvement in a minor but important source of household livelihood, they themselves would eventually take more interest in the activity and re-channel more resources to urban agriculture once their non-farming in- come earning opportunities diminished (see Chapters 8, 9 and 10).

As was further demonstrated in Chapter 6, although many women participated in non-farming income-generating activities to supplement their husbands’ live- lihood sources, men generally had better access to finances than women owing to the former’s higher participation levels in the informal labour market, the type of activities they engaged in, and their greater spatial mobility and flexibility with which they deployed their labour. Furthermore, many women exercised little

control over their incomes in terms of how the income could be spent and/or in- vested.

Another important source of income for urban farming households was the sale of urban agriculture products. Sale of livestock was a particularly important way of raising ‘quick money’ to attend to urgent financial needs. Sheep, pigs, chickens and, to a lesser extent, cows were the most important liquid assets among the livestock. In fact, this was the main reason why many households kept livestock in the first place. There were also many instances where households sold livestock in order to raise money to invest in other forms of urban agricul- ture. It was particularly common for one type of livestock to be sold in order to purchase another. This was an important way of building and upgrading assets as

well as diversifying household livelihood sources. For instance, when Obachi5

turned to farming after losing his formal employment, he started by keeping pigs. He later sold some pigs to buy a dairy cow to provide milk for his family and to

generate some income as well. Redempta,6 a single woman, started in the mid-

1990s by keeping chickens and ducks. She later (in 2000) sold part of the stock to invest in sheep. By 2007 her stock of sheep had grown to 30, part of which she planned to ‘convert into a dairy cow’ in order to save on the money she used to spend on milk.

As will be demonstrated in Chapters 9 and 10, income from crop cultivation was in most part controlled by women. Although the ownership of livestock was generally open to men and women, men tended to own large livestock while women mostly owned small livestock. And unlike men who would readily pro- claim ownership of their livestock, women who owned large livestock were more restrained from publicly claiming such ownership, especially if the livestock con- stituted an important household asset. The following comments by women re- spondents are instructive:

Although I am the one who bought the animals, I do not regard them as mine. It is not right to do so in our culture.

(Auma, 30 May 2009) I contributed towards buying the sheep we own. But if anyone asks me who the owner is, I will say it is my husband.

(Naliaka, 1 August 2009)

Such comments illustrate how social norms that define appropriate wifely be- haviour and conduct can constrain women’s self-advancement and limit their bargaining power within the household. Moreover, by refraining from asserting ownership over their property as is socially expected of a ‘good wife’, women’s contribution remains largely invisible at the community level as well. Of particu-

5 _{Interviewed on 6 June 2009.} 6

lar relevance here is the fact that in some instances cultural norms seemed to also limit women’s freedom to sell large livestock over which they had ownership

rights (see Chapters 9 and 10). In other words, large livestock held greater sig-

nificance as liquid assets for men than for women. And although the latter en- joyed more freedom over the sale of small livestock, such livestock generated more limited income.

Land has been touted in literature on Africa as important collateral for access- ing credit from financial institutions and as a source of gender inequalities on the basis that it is predominantly owned by men. However, although most of the household plots in Langas were owned by men, the plots were not titled and therefore could not serve as collateral. Thus, plot ownership by itself did not ad- vantage men over women in terms of providing the means for accessing financial resources.